Opening up catchment science: an experiment in Loweswater, Cumbria, England

This chapter reports on an attempt by academic researchers, local residents, businesses and institutional stakeholders to think through and carry out catchment science, catchment management and catchment participation simultaneously. ‘Understanding and Acting in Loweswater: A Community Approach to Catchment Management’ was a project supported by a three-year Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU1) grant and took place between 2007 and 2010. It involved the creation of a new body of lay and scientific research about the catchment of Loweswater, Cumbria, within the Lake District National Park in north-west England. It also supported the creation of a new ‘social mechanism’, the Loweswater Care Project (LCP), which drew in, supported, scrutinised, criticised and monitored this research. All of the research was connected, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, to a persistent problem – the presence of potentially toxic blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) in Loweswater lake (the village, the catchment area and its lake share the same name). We describe below the origins and formation of the LCP, the ideas and commitments that underpinned it, and the consequences of its work to date.